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Help! I Think I’m Bisexual!(06/23/2009) by William Henkin, PhD If you are a straight guy who now and then finds himself turned on by looking at nude photos of guys, or if you’re a lesbian woman who once in a while becomes aroused by men, or if in any other way you sometimes find yourself sexually interested in people who are not your ordinary fare, you might feel a bit confused and uncertain about your sexual orientation. An occasional step across your usual line may not actually mean very much, but it may also signify that you have a broader orientation than you’d thought. Bisexuality is generally misunderstood, so this sort of confusion is understandable. Some people who are bi are more attracted to members of their own sex than to those of the complementary sex, some are more attracted to the complementary sex than to their own, and some are attracted equally to both men and women. For some bisexual people attraction shifts over time: they are more attracted to men some days, more attracted to women on other days (or months, or years). Sometimes circumstances determine a person’s sexual interest so when a bisexual man who is usually more interested in women than men finds himself at a gay men’s party he may feel, think, and behave like the gay men around him, while the next day, on a date with a woman, he may feel himself quite heterosexual. In their groundbreaking study, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues presented a seven-point scale ranging from 0 to 6 in which they sought to locate men’s sexual orientation from altogether heterosexual (0) to altogether homosexual (6). The book caused a national scandal when it appeared in 1948, in part because it disclosed that at least 37 American men in every 100 had experienced one or more sexual episodes to orgasm with another male between adolescence and old age. Kinsey and his associates suggested that beyond those 37%, a considerable if unknown number of additional adult American men desired or fantasized about homosexual activity they did not engage in, because they feared what were at that time the very severe potential legal repercussions, or because it was judged a sin by their churches, or because they were monogamously and heterosexually married. Consequently, the researchers observed, even though their figures were "considerably higher than any which have previously been estimated…they must be understatements, if they are anything other than the fact." Kinsey and his colleagues who brought out Sexual Behavior in the Human Female a few years later concluded that only 50% of American males were exclusively heterosexual, and 4% were exclusively homosexual: the remaining 46% fell somewhere in between. Although Kinsey especially disliked using the term "bisexual" for these men, because the word has a very specific and different meaning in biology, which was his field, he recognized that "[b]ecause of its wide currency, the term will undoubtedly continue in use among students of human behavior and in the public in general." And so it has. Forty-five years later, in 1993, Fritz Klein proposed a different sort of spectrum for all those people in the great middle. While Klein also acknowledged that the word "bisexual" was a bit of a misnomer, he did so not because he was concerned with Kinsey’s reasons of biological nomenclature, but because as a psychiatrist he saw many more than two options in human sexuality. Klein called his spectrum a "sexual orientation grid," which took into account seven variable factors as seen through three lenses of time: past, present (the most recent one year), and ideal, which most people seem to construe as a future they would like to live out. To see the grid, and to understand how it can provide a clearer picture of personal sexuality, visit http://www.binetaz.org/ksog_short.htm. To identify his or her orientation, a person begins with "Present," then moves on to "Past," and finally to "Ideal," inserting numbers from 1 to 7 in each of the three grid time factors for every variable from A E, skipping F and G until the first five variables are done. Although in some senses those numbers stand for the 0 to 6 that Kinsey employed (completely heterosexual to completely homosexual), Klein identified the distinctions more clearly as:
1. Exclusively other sex for variables F and G the seven Klein numbers stand for:
1. Exclusively heterosexual In all aspects, the individual whose grid it is makes choices about meanings, except that "present" is generally construed to be the one year leading up to the date on which she fills it out. "Ideal," in other words, could mean ideal sexual fulfillment, ideal social fulfillment, or some other ideal of living within the context of the grid’s purpose in defining orientation. It is also possible to add further variables: to expand the grid into different dimensions, by adding, for example, scales of masculinity and femininity, male and female, or agency and communion. A male person who felt himself to be essentially heterosexual on the first set of variables might still prefer women who were relatively masculine by cultural standards, or a homosexually inclined man might prefer a lifestyle with partners who were relatively feminine in many of their characteristics. In short, feelings and behaviors are more important than labels. If you sometimes find yourself sexually attracted to people who don’t usually fit your desire profile, and even act on that attraction, your feelings and behaviors are certainly within the ordinary range of adult human sexuality. You could easily locate yourself somewhere between one and five on Kinsey’s scale, and somewhere that could functionally be called bisexual on Klein’s grid. And you can call yourself anything you wish.
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